It is a serious hashkafic and halachic shilah as to how to treat halachic information that comes through methods other than our direct mesorah. Rav Herzog z’tz’l made a pretty convincing case for having found the source of the techelet. But despite the fact that I think he is correct, I do not wear techelet. I talked with my Rav and it is not at all clear that we can change our practice based on new scientific information. A similar question comes up regarding the permissibility of killing body lice on Shabat. We know that they do not reproduce via spontaneous generation but that may not be enough to override the permssion that was granted by the sages of the past. There are good arguments on both sides of this issue. On the one hand, we have permanently lost the mesorah for techelet and unless we accept the idea that we can use scientific information such as that discovered by Rav Herzog z’tz’l we may never be able to fulfill this important mitzvah. On the other hand, scientific research by its nature is limited to the available data and while we are never again going to say that body lice *do* reproduce by spontaneous generation, the level of evidence for techelet is not quite permanently conclusive and the level of evidence in many other areas is not as strong. As a scientist I am personally hesitant to suggest changing our practice based on scientific evidence, and for that reason, I do not wear techelet despite my tremendous respect for Rav Herzog z’tz’l. At some point I might come to a different conclusion and I will discuss with my rav before making a change myself.
Thank you for this interesting thread.